Ministry releases study predicting digital “revolution” in Brazil’s energy sector

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The energy sector may undergo technological adaptations that will represent a revolution similar to that of telecommunications. In practical terms, this means, among a still unimaginable number of possibilities, transforming energy meters and other equipment into artificial intelligence units and, based on the digitalization of data and procedures, improving as never before the quality and services provided by companies in the sector.

The potential of the digitalization of the energy sector goes far beyond what can be imagined nowadays, as suggested by a study released on Friday (26), in Brasilia, by the Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME).

This is what the director of the MME’s Energy Development Department and coordinator of the Energy Systems of the Future project, Carlos Alexandre Príncipe Pires, told Agência Brasil.

The study entitled “Use of New Digital Technologies for Energy Consumption Measurement and Energy Efficiency Levels in Brazil” is, according to Pires, “an idea launched into the air” to show the community and, especially, the companies in the energy sector, “an initial horizon” about the impact that the digitalization of equipment and services can have for Brazil.

Prepared through the German-Brazilian Energy Partnership, the work is the product of a cooperation between the German Ministry of Economy and Energy and the MME, which is based on European experiments in the use of Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, and cutting-edge digital technologies.

It uses these technologies to collect, process, and analyze data related to energy consumption and energy efficiency measures in the Brazilian context.

A FAST, NEVER-ENDING PROCESS

“My perception is that digitalization is a process with no return for all sectors at some point since it is a tool that allows greater efficiency in the use of resources. Otherwise, it would not be justified. This is very noticeable. All sectors in which there is digitalization become more competitive and efficient, and this will be no different in the energy sector,” he argued.

Pires added that the effects of digitalization in this sector would occur at an even faster speed than in telecommunications since they are based on tools already made available by telecommunications, both in the residential and commercial and industrial areas.

“The tendency is that this process will occur faster than the one that occurred in telecommunications, because telecommunications provided other sectors with a gain in time. But everything will depend on a step yet to be taken in the modernization of the electrical sector. I believe that in the free energy market, this step will be taken much faster because it is intrinsic to the freedom of the market. In the captive market, which are the energy distributors, the step will be slower, but as fast or faster as the legislation allows,” adds the director of the MME.

Faced with so many possibilities, there is no way, according to Pires, of not drawing a parallel between the digitalization process and what happened in the communications sector. “Before, there were landlines and telephone booths. When cell phones appeared, we didn’t have an exact notion of where we could get to. Nobody imagined that, in a little more than ten years, even complex banking operations would be done through them,” he observed.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE PROSUMER

He adds that the sector’s digitalization encompasses not only consumption and supply but “almost infinite possibilities of using artificial intelligence for process improvement.”

“The consumer becomes what we call a prosumer: a more proactive consumer that, for example, can become a producer by generating, consuming and distributing energy from home,” he said, pointing out a basic example of what he sees as one of the possible “revolutions” that should occur in the sector, from the adoption of technologies involving the digitalization of the consumption relationship.

The possibilities don’t stop there: “The consumer will be more active in his relationship with the companies, knowing how much he consumes in real-time and adopting adjustments that may or may not be automated at home, commercially and industrially.” In this sense, still in the field of examples, an air conditioner could be turned on shortly before a person arrives home, based on a geolocator that, via the internet, passes this information to the energy center of the house. It could also be turned off automatically, using the same technology, when the person leaves home.

POWER DISTRIBUTION

Digitalization will also have functions in the area of power distribution. “It will dispense with the need for a person to go out and measure energy consumption or even to make connections or reconnections. Everything can be done remotely. Another possibility is to automate, with the help of artificial intelligence, the reconnection, in an alternative way, of the energy supply in case a neighborhood transformer presents a problem,” explained Pires.

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